Income migration

We often talk about migration of people from state to state, but today we want to focus on a related indicator, how states gain or lose income from the movement of households. When we look over the last decade, how did North Carolina do in this measure? N.C. State University economist Mike Walden responds.

“We did very, very, very well. We have data now from the census for the decade in 2000 to 2010, and from that data, we can say that North Carolina gained over $16 billion of income from new households moving to the state.

“And indeed, that’s an excess of those few households who actually left the state. And that actually ranks us fourth, fourth among all the states, in terms of income gains. Now Florida by far was the biggest winner. Their gain was $67 billion.

“But we were not far behind the second and third place states, Arizona and Texas. They both gained about $18 billion, and we were at $16 billion. And we were also well ahead in terms of income gain of our neighboring states of South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Virginia.

“Now some states actually lost income due to people moving out. The leaders in those losing — in that losing category — were California, New York, Ohio, Illinois and Michigan.”